School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bristol Brunel Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 38 families who named Bristol Brunel Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 226 and 248 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Bristol, City of actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.

1.10

first choices for every place available

248 first preferences for 226 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bristol Brunel Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Bristol Brunel Academy, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Bristol, City of as a whole and cover every state-funded school in the authority. Anyone quoting you odds for a named school is making them up.

Across Bristol, City of, 28% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 171 of 610 appeals heard in 2024–2026. The England figure is 20.1%.

A panel is not deciding whether you want the school. It decides whether the admission arrangements were lawful and correctly applied, and then whether the harm to your child of not being admitted outweighs the harm to the school of going over its published number. Cases built on preference rather than on those two questions are the ones that fail.

See the full appeal figures for Bristol, City of.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Bristol, City of ones. Whichever school you are appealing for, the panel works through the same two stages and is required to ignore the same things.

How contested this school has been

Bristol Brunel Academy turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 8 of those years. In the other 1 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Bristol Brunel Academy, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 0.65 per place 136 first choices 208 places 2016/17 0.84 per place 177 first choices 210 places 2017/18 1.05 per place 238 first choices 227 places 2018/19 1.2 per place 275 first choices 230 places 2019/20 1.06 per place 274 first choices 259 places 2020/21 0.99 per place 255 first choices 257 places 2021/22 0.95 per place 273 first choices 286 places 2022/23 1.2 per place 340 first choices 284 places 2023/24 1.44 per place 323 first choices 225 places 2024/25 1.32 per place 294 first choices 223 places 2025/26 1.21 per place 273 first choices 225 places 2026/27 1.1 per place 248 first choices 226 places
First preferences per place at Bristol Brunel Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 248 first preferences for 226 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bristol Brunel Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 208 136 136 0.65
2016/17 210 177 173 0.84
2017/18 227 238 198 1.05
2018/19 230 275 197 1.2
2019/20 259 274 225 1.06
2020/21 257 255 219 0.99
2021/22 286 273 247 0.95
2022/23 284 340 249 1.2
2023/24 225 323 204 1.44
2024/25 223 294 202 1.32
2025/26 225 273 197 1.21
2026/27 226 248 210 1.1

Places offered

226

in 2026/27

Named first choice

248

518 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

84.7%

210 of 248

Offers to families outside the council

1%

3 of 226 offers

Was the school full?

This is the question a panel spends most of its time on. At the second stage of an appeal it weighs the harm to the school of taking an extra child against the harm to your child of being refused — and how much room the school has is the heart of that. The admission authority has to show harm over and above the fact that its published number has been reached, so it is fair to ask what the specific harm is — how the second stage actually works.

Places, Years 7 to 11

1,180

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,302

110.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

122

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

0

excluded from the figures above

Read this before you use these numbers

These are whole-school figures across Years 7 to 11, not the year group you are appealing for. A school can hold spare places in its upper years while the year you want is genuinely full, and the panel will have the year-group numbers in front of it. So this does not show that Bristol Brunel Academy has room for your child.

They are also the school's own reported capacity, as at 1 May 2025 — a year behind the application figures further up this page, and a description rather than a finding.

On the published figures Bristol Brunel Academy was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Bristol Brunel Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,080 places 976 on roll 2010/11 1,180 places 1,014 on roll 2011/12 1,180 places 1,069 on roll 2012/13 1,080 places 1,070 on roll 2013/14 1,180 places 1,076 on roll 2014/15 1,180 places 1,102 on roll 2015/16 1,180 places 1,015 on roll 2016/17 1,180 places 1,034 on roll 2017/18 1,180 places 1,063 on roll 2018/19 1,180 places 1,093 on roll 2020/21 1,180 places 1,184 on roll 2021/22 1,180 places 1,268 on roll 2022/23 1,180 places 1,337 on roll 2023/24 1,180 places 1,335 on roll 2024/25 1,180 places 1,302 on roll
Whole-school figures including any sixth form, as at 1 May each year. 2019/20 is missing because the 2020 School Capacity survey was cancelled.

Department for Education, School capacity, school-level file, 2024/25. Published under the Open Government Licence.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Bristol, City of

Postcode BS15 1NU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135300).

Other contested secondary schools in Bristol, City of

Applications and offers: Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27. Appeal figures: Admission appeals in England. Both under the Open Government Licence.